Draining 50-foot putts. High-stepping on greens. Doing the wave on the 18th fairway.

Leading the British Open?

This is not the way golf is supposed to look from a man pushing 60. No, this is a time for arthritic backs and chasing grandkids, for worrying about 401(k)s and planning retirement parties. This is a time when "shooting your age" means you decided to quit after the front nine.

Tom Watson did not get the memo -- maybe it got mixed up in the mail with his AARP newsletter -- and for that, a generation of golfers are eternally grateful this morning.

"It amazes me," Frank Burke said yesterday afternoon as he pulled his clubs from his trunk at Hendricks Field in Belleville. He knows how 60 feels. First thing in the morning, the attorney from West Caldwell was headed to the hospital for a cardiac catheterization.

Burke had sextuplet bypass surgery two years ago. He believes that age is just a number, that it should never get in the way of life, but sometimes, the body disagrees. It happens.

"It would be an inspiration if he could hang on and win this thing," Burke said. "It really would."

Watson is giving hope to everyone who needs a garden hose to put out their birthday candles. What he is doing in Scotland this weekend, the way he is outplaying golfers less than half his age to lead the British Open after three rounds, is totally inconceivable.

He was a nice story when he challenged for the first-round lead on Thursday, an even better story when he led after the second round, and now is on the verge of writing the most improbable story in golf history. He is 4 under and alone in the lead at Turnberry. Can he really do this?

Watson is more than a decade older than the oldest major champion (Julius Boros was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship). He is nine months removed from hip-replacement surgery and more than a quarter-century removed from his last major championship.

He just looks old. With his wrinkled face and rounded shoulders and his made-for-grampa sweater, he looks like a character stolen from some prescription drug commercial. But that golf swing? It is every bit as sweet as it was in his prime.

He will wake up today 18 holes away from a sixth Open championship, and a generation of golfers will wake up early to watch him. Of course, for most men his age, they'll already be up. It's hard to get back to sleep after that eighth bathroom trip of the night.

"The baby-boomer generation doesn't have too much time left to make an impact on the world," Joe Marinello said after his round at Forest Hill Country Club in Bloomfield. "Am I right or wrong?"

"Make an impact?" his playing partner Carmen Lore cracked. "You didn't make an impact out here, that's for sure."

Marinello is 63. Lore is 62. They were young men starting their families when Watson defeated Jack Nicklaus at Turnberry 32 years ago in one of golf's most famous duels. Now, Lore was sipping a drink with his friends on the club's patio as his two grandchildren played in the pool.

Time passes. Expectations change. Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986 when he was 46, and that was an inspiration to every middle-aged man coming to grips with the passing of his youth.

But it is easier for a man in his 40s to convince himself he can hang with the younger generation. A man in his 50s has started to accept that he has lost a step. And then comes 60.

"I think this would be bigger" than Nicklaus, said Richard Parkinson, a 56-year-old Clifton resident, before he teed off at Hendricks. "The odds of him winning at 59 are so much greater."

Nicklaus hadn't won a tournament in nearly six years before his triumph at Augusta National, but he was still competitive on the PGA Tour. Watson, meanwhile, shot an 83 in the second round at the Masters this spring and talked like a man who knew his time as a competitive golfer had ended.

Now he gets a chance for his ninth major. He briefly lost his lead yesterday with a couple bogeys, then drained a 30-foot birdie putt on the 16th hole. He hit his approach on the par-5 17th right of the pin, only to smile as it took a generous bounce toward the hole to set up another birdie.

As he walked up the 18th fairway, the usually stoic Scottish gallery was doing the wave, so he joined in. And all around the globe, you just know there were men his age watching him throw his arms in the air and thinking the same thing

"Please don't pull a muscle!"

Maybe he plays like a guy pushing 60 today and falls apart. Or maybe Tom Watson makes history, and in the process, shows a few million men with aching backs and AARP cards that age is just another number.

Steve Politi appears regularly in The Star-Ledger. He may be reached at spoliti@starledger.com, or follow him at Twitter.com/NJ_StevePoliti.